About today's word:[Late Latin bovinus, from Latin bos, cow.](Here is another word that refers to cows: vaccine. It comes fromvacca, Latin for cow, after inoculation prepared from cows. -Anu) There is a difference: bos is a MALE cow, vacca a FEMALE one.Emanuela

no bull? But seriously, this is all kind of odd. the major sense of cow in English is "the female of any bovine animal (as the ox, bison, or buffalo); most commonly applied to the female of the domestic species (Bos Taurus)". Bull is most commonly applied to the male of Bos Taurus. cow and bull are also used in the same manner for other large animals (elephant, whale, etc.) In the U.S. cow is used for either sex of Bos Taurus (and the plural is cattle); and, interestingly, 'bossy' is dialect for cow (female) and toro is the Spanish word for bull. ole!

In the U.S. cow is used for either sex of Bos Taurus (and the plural is cattle)

Well being a city folk-- i use Cows--for the plural too. "look, there are cows in the field" But beyond that, cows are milk cows-- and cattle are beef. So here in NY--on Long Island and upstate NY, dairy country, there are cows in the field. but when i went out to Texas, or cross country-- i saw cattle.

And for me, cows are female-- they have large, obvious udders.. (that how you know they are cows!) sometimes you'll see a bull in a field with some cows.. udderly devoid of cow like looks...

but cattle are those Bos Taurus that are not as obviously sexed--(most of my experience with cows is from a car going 50 m/p/h past a field.. i don't claim to have had much real contact with farm animals.) With out an large udder, at 50m/p/h, a cow is hard to tell from a bull--and a herd of them become cattle.

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